Bluff Your Way in Didactic: Ovid's Ars Amatoria and Remedia Amoris

arguor obsceni doctor adulterii

Ovid Tristia 2.212

Ever since Augustus' extraordinary public acknowledgement of Ovid's didactic powers, the poet's critics, adopting the role of defending him with, we can only assume, the best of intentions, have, to a quite remarkable degree, detracted from his achievement. ¹ Malcolm Heath (1985.254) bases his plea on a formal technicality: "Lucretius adopts the posture of one expounding and advocating the Epicurean philosophy, and that is precisely what he intends to achieve: philosophical persuasion. Ovid, equally, adopts in the Ars Amatoria the posture of one expounding and inculcating the principles of the art of seduction; but no one supposes that Ovid really wrote his poem in order to instruct the youth of Rome in that art." Heath cites the examples of Lucretius and Ovid to illustrate a distinction he makes between "formal" didacticism ("purporting to be intended to instruct") and "final" didacticism ("intended to instruct"). The subject of the Ars Amatoria is ostensibly amor, even arguably adulterium, but we are assured that the poem does not really, finally, intentionally teach it. Its very didactic form, apparently, may even act as a guarantee of that. Were the academic profession to apply this distinction with such disinterested rigour to its own activities, the result might--just conceivably--be somewhat disconcerting. However, the continuing stream of publications on Ovid's amatory didactic would seem to testify to a sturdy faith in the pedagogical effect, at least in respect of scholarly writings. ² Thus fortified (or perhaps not, for questions concerning the authority and truth claims of any pedagogical act cannot wholly be evaded), let us delve into what is involved in the question "(what) does the Ars Amatoria teach?"

In the opening lines of the first book, the poet announces that Venus has put him in charge of the education of her son (me Venus artificem tenero praefecit Amori, 7). A recalcitrant charge, to be sure, but at a tender age when he might still be receptive to a teacher's attentions (ille quidem ferus est et qui mihi saepe repugnet;/sed puer est, aetas mollis et apta regi, 9-10). There follows a mythological scene of teaching (11-16): ³

Phillyrides puerum cithara perfecit Achillem
     atque animos placida contudit arte feros.
qui totiens socios, totiens exterruit hostes,
    creditur annosum pertimuisse senem;
quas Hector sensurus erat, poscente magistro
    verberibus iussas praebuit ille manus.

Chiron made the boy Achilles accomplished on the lyre and subdued his fierce spirits with his peaceable skill. The one who so often terrified his friends, so often his enemies, is believed to have been scared of the old one, full of years. The hands which Hector was destined to feel, at the word of his teacher, he presented, as ordered, for smacks.

In passing, we might note the "already/not yet" teleological structure characteristic of such scenes of teaching. We can compare the picture Horace gives us of his education, describing himself, with hindsight, in a period before he was "the poet": already Horace, but not yet "Horace." The "already" is Horace's image of himself in the past--his past self-fulfilling its destiny towards the present in which he writes; the "not yet" is what he is doing as a boy--learning poetry--not yet writing it. ⁴ The same structure is effected in the Ars Amatoria by means of citation of the Iliad, with the already, but not yet, "man-slaying" hands of Achilles compliantly held out to receive blows. The teleological structure of such pedagogical anecdotes points to a present that may be either "in spite of" or "because of" the teaching scene, or a mixture of the two.

What, then, does this exemplum tell us about the education of Achilles or the effects of teaching in general? Chiron makes the young Achilles accomplished in lyre-playing, and we might look "forward" into the "future" to the...